


What parents would want

by Isidar_Mithrim



Series: Godfather and Godson [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Going to Hogwarts, Harry Potter Next Generation, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, Pre-Epilogue, September the First, Tough conversation, godfather and godson - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-05 03:30:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20482139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isidar_Mithrim/pseuds/Isidar_Mithrim
Summary: Teddy is about to leave for his first year at Hogwarts, but he can’t clear his mind from an uncomfortable thought.





	What parents would want

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Quello che loro vorrebbero](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/515537) by Isidar Mithrim. 

> I began to write this story (in Italian) more than a year ago, with the intention of posting it on September the First for a contest. I didn’t finished it in time, and it had been laying on my PC for months, until few days ago I realised this year I could give it another try ;) It’s probably not worth the wait, but I hope you’ll enjoy it anyway ^^
> 
> This story has a companion piece, ‘Features of the past’, that you can find in the 'Godfather and Godson' series. It’s actually a sort of prequel, so I’d suggest to read it first, even if it’s not necessary ^^

When he got out from Grimmauld Place mantlepiece, Teddy couldn't even brush the ash from his robes before Al clung to his legs and James jumped on his back, putting his arms so tightly around his neck he almost chocked.

“Teddy!”

“You're here, finally!”

The way they welcomed him, you'd almost think they hadn't seen each others in months rather than half a day. At this rate, when he'd come back for Christmas they’d follow him even to the loo.

In truth, Teddy was really pleased by their overwhelming greeting. He was feeling a bit down that morning – the last few days, actually – because he kept dwelling on a certain, uncomfortable thought, and the kids’ enthusiasm helped him to clear his mind. 

Yes, from time to time they could be a bit much – especially James – but Teddy knew how to deal with their excitement: he’d found out their greatest weakness since a long while, and he wasn’t scare to use it when the situation required it, like in that precise moment.

Teddy grabbed the two little, adorable brats and tickled them without mercy – he knocked two chairs while wrestling them, but beside that his move proved to be as effective as always, because Al e James finally let him free, begging him to stop between the laughs.

“I reckon it was well deserved” said Ginny with a warm smile, pulling him in a hug. When Teddy let go, she sighed, looking at him in the eyes. “I’m not sure I’m ready to let go the best tickler of the house.”

Teddy felt a lump in his throat at these words, knowing she meant way more than that. “You’re a good tickler too” he said sheepishly.

“But a way better Bat-Bogey Hexer” said Ginny with a wink, making him chuckle.

“Oh, I can definitely vouch for that.”

Teddy whirled when he heard Harry’s amused voice behind his back. His Godfather was holding Lily on his hip, an arm under her bum and a grin upon his face.

“Edì!” said Lily with her little happy voice, squirming in Harry’s grip to lean toward him, her stubby hands stretched in the air. “Hair!”

“Well, good morning to you too” said Teddy with glee, taking her tiny hands. “Let see, which color would you like today?”

“All!”

“All the colors?!” he asked, widening his eyes in pretended awe.

“Yes!” exclaimed Lily, her eyes shining with excitement.

“I wanna see too!” yelled James, rushing forward with Al in tow.

“What a surprise” chuckled Harry, ruffling Teddy’s hair with his free hand. “Seems like you’ll have an audience.”

“Make them green!” said Al.

“But green is for Slytherins!”

“James!” scolded Harry, while Ginny glared at her son. “Do we really need to remind you that Andromeda is a Slytherin?” she asked coolly.

James searched Teddy’s gaze immediately, his eyes widened in worry. “I… I didn’t mean it like that...”

“I know you didn’t” he smiled. “But –“

“Edì, hair!”

He chuckled. “Someone is a little impatient, today.”

“Try always” grinned Ginny.

“You’ll make green?” insisted Al, and this time James only dared to roll his eyes.

“Yes, I’ll make green too” said Teddy, theatrically laying his fingers on his temples. “Be quite, now… I need to concentrate.”

The three kids looked at him with widened eyes and gaping mouths when he began uttering inexistent words with a dramatic voice. He kept speaking for a little, then he squeezed his eyes shut and colored his hair green, yellow, purple, red, pink, orange and blue again, in rapid sequence.

Al and James cheered, Harry and Ginny clapped, but as always it was Lily who had his favorite reaction: she was laughing with mirth, and Teddy felt a surge of affection toward her. She'd learned to say his name just a little while ago, and he hoped with all his might she wouldn't forget it during their months apart.

He was tying Lily on the baby chair beside the table when his granny arrived with the trunk. Teddy knew she’d pretended she had to finish some chores just to give him a bit of time alone with the Potters, and he’d really appreciated the thought. Nonetheless, he was glad she arrived, partially because he wanted to stay with all of them during breakfast, partially because they’d waited for her to eat, and he was starving.

It wasn’t the first time the Potters used the empty house as starting point for errands in London, and Teddy had been very glad when Ginny had asked to his gran if they could meet there to have breakfast together and walk him to the station.

Despite the happy chats and Kreacher's delicacies, though, after a while the cheerful lightheartedness he’d felt upon his arrival at Grimmauld Place faded away. He'd looked forward to that morning for weeks, sure he’d be over the moon, and for a while he felt like it, but not anymore.

He tried to keep up the facade, but he didn’t miss Harry’s mildly worried expression, nor the way he exchanged glances with his granny and Ginny.

Teddy had solemnly sworn that he’d only go to look at the photo with Harry, but for the first time he was regretting that promise.

He knew he should be grateful that Harry took a free morning for him – as if throwing him a surprise party with all the Weasley the afternoon before wasn’t already more than Teddy had expected – but he also knew that the visit to Sirius’s room often became an occasion for some deeper conversations, and he wasn’t sure he had the strength nor the words to explain what was troubling him.

As such, it was with a heavy heart that Teddy left the kitchen when Harry caught his gaze and nodded towards the ceiling.

Sirius’s room was exactly as he remembered, with its walls plastered by those weirdly motionless posters that gave it a scruffy vibe. Despite that, it’d always been clean, because Kreacher insisted to spend his free days tidying up Grimmauld Place, and he was always happy to come by to help if the Potters used the house.

The bed creaked when Harry took a sit in his usual spot, patting the space beside him. “Come and join me, will you?”

Teddy nodded and sat down, and when Harry smiled at him Teddy smiled back, hoping against hope that his godfather wouldn’t see through his pretense.

“So… ready for the great day?”

Teddy let his gaze wander on the motorcycles posters, carefully avoiding those with bikini-clad girls. He wasn’t a good liar, especially when it came to Harry.

“Yeah” he said with a shrug, trying to sound casual. He heard his godfather sighing, and he knew Harry wasn’t buying it even before he spoke.

“Are you sure? Because, well… I hope you don’t mind me saying it, but… you seem a bit down, you know?”

Teddy stayed silent, moving his eyes on a Gryffindor banners. Who knows, may be it was going to be a Gryffindor as well, as his father and his friends… or as his godfather.

Harry put a hand on his knee, squeezing it gently. “You know you can tell me if there’s something wrong, right?”

Finally, Teddy gathered the courage to nod. He felt his eyes prickling, and blinked back the tears.

“I know it’s gonna be tough to be far from home for such a long time” said Harry. “But… well, I thought you were eager to go to Hogwarts…”

“It’s not that” clarified Teddy hastily. “I mean… of course I’m going to miss you all, but…”

It was a stupid thought, the one that kept popping in his mind uninvited, and he despised himself a bit for realising it just before he had to leave, making everything harder.

“But?” prompted Harry.

Teddy looked at him chewing his lower lip, unsure of what to say. Rationally he knew Harry was going to understand – he always did – but… what if this time was different? What if he’d think it was stupid?

“Have you… have you ever thought about living in Godric’s Hollow?” he asked, wishing it’d be enough to make him understand.

Any hope that Harry might got to the heart of the problem by his own vanished when he widened his eyes, taken aback. “Well… I actually lived there for a bit, after Hogwarts, in the little house Sirius bought with his uncle Alphard’s money… I thought you remembered… You came by many times with you gran…”

Teddy swallowed, and his gaze fell upon the Marauders’ picture he cherished so much. He wondered if Sirius was already living alone, when the photo had been taken. “Yeah… yeah, I remember, but… What I meant was… have you ever thought of leaving at your parents’ house? You know, the one where… where Voldemort…”

“Oh” murmured Harry, finally getting the matter. Teddy was relieved seeing he was still serious: he’d been stupid fearing Harry was going to laugh at him when it was obvious he wasn’t ever going to, not for something like this. Now sure Harry was going to make an effort to give him a true answer, Teddy threw him a questioning glance.

“Well, I did thought about that, at the beginning” said Harry. “But… do you remember what the house looks like, right?”

Teddy nodded. It wasn’t an image so easy to forget, but he’d been glad that Harry had chose to took him there the year before, after the memorial for the tenth anniversary of the Battle. It’d been nice knowing that Harry was willing to share something like that with him as well.

“Why you didn’t fix it?”

Teddy had already wondered about it when he’d seen the state of the cottage, but he hadn’t dare to ask, fearing Harry would regret bringing him there.

“Because… well, I don’t know for sure, but it’s like… it’s like that house is the symbol of my parents’ sacrifice, somehow. Like… some sort of memorial, in a way. It didn’t feel tight to fix it, as nothing ever happened. But… may be I was wrong. May be they would have liked if I’d lived there, where I was born. After all, it’s the only place where we lived together, to my knowledge.”

He liked that too, about Harry – that when they spoke about this stuff he didn’t act like he knew everything and Teddy knew nothing.

Silence fell, and Teddy let his gaze lay upon his father’s young features. He seemed very happy at his friends’ side.

After a while Teddy threw a glance at Harry, and saw that he was staring at the picture as well.

“How do you know?” he asked him in a low voice.

Harry turned his head toward him, perplexed. “Know what?”

“What your parents would want.”

Harry closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath. “I know that… that sometimes, when we have to make a choice, we wonder what would make them the proudest and what would please them the most, and that’s ok, but the truth is… we can only imagine the answer. And anyway, the answer doesn’t really matter, you know? We have to make the choices _we _feel rights, not the choices we think they _might _feel right.”

Teddy wasn’t sure he fully got that concept, but it was true that from time to time – like that morning – he did things to make his parents happy, because he wanted to believe they kept an eye on him, and he didn’t want to disappoint them.

“You don’t think they wouldn’t like if… if I’m happy were… you know…”

Teddy lowered his gaze, incapable to say it aloud, and only when Harry laid a gentle hand on his shoulder he found the will to raise his head again, looking his godfather in the eyes.

“What I know for certain,” said Harry, “is that our parents died so we could live. Nothing would make them more glad than to see us happy, even at Hogwarts or Godric’s Hollow. _Especially _at Hogwarts or Godric’s Hollow.”

There was truth in those words, Teddy was aware of it. And yet…

“I… I’m not sure I can do it.”

“Well… you can’t be sure until you try” said Harry with a kind smile. “And… may be at the beginning it will be a bit harder for you, I won’t lie about that, but I believe everything’s going to be fine, eventually.”

Teddy would have loved to be infected by his smile, but his lips didn’t cooperate. “What if it won’t?” he murmured.

Harry sighed. “Then you could write to me or your gran or Ginny, or you could speak to Neville, and we’ll do the best to help you.”

“You think they’d understand too?”

“Yes, I really think they would” said Harry with no hesitation. “Your gran… well, she’s your grandmother, and I’m sure she misses your mum as much as you do. And Ginny went back to Hogwarts for her last year, even if just a couple of months before she’d lost her brother Fred in the Battle.”

“Oh… I forgot.”

To his surprise, Harry grinned. “You should be really glad she can’t hear you right now, you know? The last time I told her that I forgot something as important, she glared at me and coolly said _lucky you_” mimicked Harry with an annoyed tone.

Teddy chuckled, and Harry playfully nudged him in the belly. “Don’t worry, my lips are sealed. But I bet that now that you remembered it, you regret talking to me rather than her” he joked, and Teddy couldn’t help but smile.

“Nah” he said, nudging him back. “You’re not too bad yourself.”

When Harry pulled him in a hug, Teddy held him tight as well.

Harry let go first, throwing a glance at his old watch.

“It’s almost time to go” he said, taking Teddy by the shoulders and looking him right into the eyes. “I’d like to give you something before we leave, but if you prefer to talk a bit with Ginny I can ask her to join you here.”

Teddy was taken aback by Harry’s word. On one hand, he’d really like to hear Ginny’s advice, but on the other he was eager to know what Harry wanted to give him, and if he had to pick between those two…

“May be… may be I could talk to her while we go to the station, or… or I could write…”

Harry chuckled, amused. “Yeah, I’m sure she’ll be happy to hear from you” he said, ruffling his hair. He then put a hand in his pocket and pulled out a folded parchment that looked pretty old.

“Is it a letter?” Teddy asked hopeful. May be his parents had written him something for the occasion?

“No, it’s not a letter.”

“Oh.”

Teddy was a bit disappointed, but tried not to show it. It’d been a silly thought, because he knew that his parents had heard about the battle at the very last minute… of course they hadn’t had time to write him something.

“What is it, then?”

“Do you remember when I told you about the Marauders?”

“Of course!” said Teddy with renewed enthusiasm, looking at the parchment with even more curiosity. He’d never forget the day Harry brought him in the very same room to show him that picture and to share the Marauders’ story, nor he’d forget when they went in the Shrieking Shack the year before.

May be there where other pictures inside the parchment? Harry had always told him the only photograph of the four Marauders he knew of was the one in front of them, and not even Hermione managed to detach it from the wall, but may be he’d found more?

“Well… actually, there’s a thing about them I haven’t told you yet” said Harry with a warm smile. “But you must promise me it’s going to be a secret between us, at least until James will be at Hogwarts too” he added with a wink.

“I promise!” said Teddy immediately.

“See, this parchment is way more than it seems… something very useful and valuable”

Teddy watched eagerly while Harry unfolded it and tapped it with his wand.

“_I solemnly swear that I’m up to no good_.”

**Author's Note:**

> I know JKR said James probably stolen the Maps from Harry’s desk, but I can’t help thinking Teddy deserved to use it too ;) Please indulge me on that :P
> 
> Beside 'Features of the past' I also have another prequel in mind plus a sequel, so if you are interested you may keep an eye on the series ;)
> 
> Last note: I swear I wrote the bit about Ginny with the first draft a year ago (even if I added the bit about ‘I forgot’ – ‘Lucky you’ later on), but if you’d like to read how the conversation might have went if Teddy had chosen to speak to Ginny rather than to Harry, you should definitely check this work by Floreat Castellum: [Teddy speaks to Ginny about his parents](https://floreatcastellumposts.tumblr.com/post/185677288341/i-love-your-work-so-much-youre-such-an) ^^
> 
> Ok, I think I said it all! Thanks for reading, and feel free to drop any feedback, suggestion, correction about the story or the translation, opinion about headcanons and so on ^^  
You can also find me on [tumblr](https://isidar-mithrim.tumblr.com)


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